Questions Arise On Shore Trail Plan

By LEO H. CARNEY

Published: July 14, 1991

A PLAN by the National Park Service to promote the Jersey Shore nationally as one major tour destination, like a national park, is being questioned by environmentalists and others for its potential to create more traffic congestion and harm the state's beaches and ocean water quality.

The New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail, as the plan is known, will feature five thematic tour routes from Sandy Hook, its northern anchor, to the Delaware Bay shore in Cumberland and Salem Counties, its southern anchor. The themes, which are still being discussed, will include the state's maritime history and will encompass more than 372 cultural, historic and environmental attractions and individual buildings, according to spokesmen for the Park Service.

But those concerned about the coastal trail said in recent interviews that although it would be an invaluable marketing tool, the plan so far had not addressed the potential impact of motor vehicles and more people on the Shore's air quality, sewage treatment plants, the ocean and the state's park system.

"If we were going to use the beauty of the Shore to attract tourists from all over the country, like a Yellowstone Park, it will be an injustice to them that we do not have a healthy and stable marine environment for them to enjoy," said Dr. Dennis Sternberg, co-founder of Save Our Shores, an environmental group based in Ocean Township.

Except for parts of the sparsely populated bay shore, Dr. Sternberg and other critics said, the Shore is already heavily strained from the last four decades of imprudent development and lax state regulation.

"I did not think that you could get any more people down to the Shore than we have now," said Cindy Zipf, the director of Clean Water Action, a 100,000-member environmental coalition based in Sandy Hook.

Ms. Zipf was one of several spokesmen for environmental groups, including the New Jersey Audubon Society, who said they had not been invited to testify at public hearings held by the Park Service last year and this year to plan the trail.

Janet Wolfe, the Park Service's project director for the coastal trail, said there was "no question that we will have to comply with the national Environmental Protection Act and develop environmental impact statements for each of the five individual theme routes that will make up the trail." She said public hearings would be held on the routes before the first route is scheduled to open in September 1992.

The objections to the trail plan come at a time when the Shore economy struggles to recover from several years of declining tourism revenue -- a result, in part, of widespread reports of ocean pollution and beach closings beginning in 1987. Last month, the Legislature took up consideration of a proposal for further restriction of development in the state's coastal zone.

Moreover, Gov. Jim Florio has made protection of the state's coastal waters one of his administration's top priorities. Sponsored by Bradley

The trail concept was sponsored in the form of a law by Senator Bill Bradley and authorized by Congress in October 1988. Senator Bradley defended the trail, saying that its very intention was to preserve the Shore's cultural, historic and environmental features while "tying them all together so that they can be interpreted and enjoyed as a whole."

This, he said, "will be done without any environmental degradation." He said it was hoped that the additional tourists would visit from March to May and from September to November, not during the crowded summers.

The New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail will take in a region generally east of the Garden State Parkway in Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May Counties. This would be linked with the state's Delaware Bay shore, south of Routes 47 and 49 in Cumberland and Salem Counties, to form a contiguous coastal tour route from Sandy Hook to Deepwater.

Among the trail's attractions are parts of the Pinelands National Reserve, the 350-year-old Cumberland County community of Bridgeton, the historic districts of Cape May and Ocean Grove and dozens of parks and historic structures.

The attractions also include rivers like the Maurice, which is the natural east-west boundary of Cumberland and Salem Counties and is awaiting designation as a national wild and scenic river by the Department of the Interior. Other points along the Park Service's tour routes are the Atlantic City Convention Hall and, to the south in Margate, Lucy the Margate Elephant, a huge 110-year-old elephantine landmark at the beach that was originally built to attract tourists. A Special Designation

Although it will not be a national park, Mrs. Wolfe said, the coastal trail has received a special designation by the Park Service and will appear on the service's nationally distributed lists and brochures of places to visit.

Eugene Dilbeck, the director of the State Division of Travel and Tourism, said the lists and brochures were often used by tour travelers who visit designated Park Service destinations and who can afford such vacations.